


Beautiful, Deadly, Perfect

by charybdis



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Don't Have to Know Canon, F/F, Other, POV Second Person, Plot What Plot, author doesn't know canon, sexbent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:20:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charybdis/pseuds/charybdis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I'll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting</i><br/>-from Wishbone by Richard Siken</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful, Deadly, Perfect

The first time Natalia is inside you, it's three inches of sharp steel, and it's a crackling pain, bright with broken circuitry as your arm goes numb and heavy. She pants breathlessly, all curves and sweat and writhing beneath you, eyes shining with vindictive triumph.

The orders that you have been given are to train her, nothing else — to teach her to do what you do, the knife in the dark. But it’s fucking _killing_ you. Natalia fights like she owes someone something, like she's looking, not for vengeance, but to fulfill some inexplicable duty, repay a mysterious debt.

She licks her lips obscenely, and that makes it easy for you to press down on your hard, dead arm until Natalia stops struggling, until she arches and goes still, conceding the bout.

You can't help drawing close to her, running the tip of your nose along the soft skin of her neck, whispering, "God, you're beautiful. The things I would destroy just to be you, darling."

Natalia arches under you, somehow managing to make the movement sarcastic — oh she _is_ talented — and says, "You mean, you want to be _with_ me," dryly.

It snowed last night, and you dreamed of battle, of death, of following your partners into war, and the thousand thousand things you’ve forgotten. You press your body against hers, shapely and fit and so, so good, and you say,

"No."

*

They send you on a mission together, and of course the two of you come out on top, countless dead soldiers at your feet.

You run your hand down the flat of your blade, and it comes away dripping with blood, none if it your own. You hold up her hand to Natalia, who smirks and shakes her head. "We have not gotten what we came for," she reminds you.

You slowly trace a red star on your own cheek, ignoring the way the blood starts to drip and ruin the lines as soon as you’re done. You adjust your mask, and motion for Natalia to lead the way. "After you my lady."

"Why do you persist in thinking that I am anyone's lady?" Natalia asks, exasperated and already heading off into the compound.

"You are too ambitious not to rule over someone," you reply easily. "So nobility you must be."

*

You are part of a duo.

You know where Natalia will be when you fight. You’re able to anticipate the precise moment when she will duck, when she’ll turn and when her bullet will pass through the air just a fraction to your left.

That's what gets you into trouble. It's the ebb and flow of working with a partner, familiar and strange at the same time. It's the unconscious memory of your body, an impulse so ingrained that it's muscle memory, and you don't realize that you've stolen Natalia's kill until after the knife leaves your hand, until she's glaring at you with those stunning green eyes of hers, just for a moment, but enough to burn.

You don't know what you were thinking. Because you weren't thinking. You saw a kill, a fatal headshot that your partner (couldn't) (wouldn't) (shouldn't) have been able to take, and your body moved, the knife on its deadly trajectory before you could register that she wouldn't thank you for it. It was the wrong thing to do.

She turns to you, and you raise your hands in apology, but she narrows her eyes and carries on without a word. Afterwards — when you’ve retrieved the objective and are heading back — she punches you in the face, not even with half her full force, and she smiles when you lick the blood from your upper lip. And you know you're forgiven.

*

There was a guideline — you have no idea if it was yours or someone else’s, nor even when it might have applied to you — only that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Never sleep with anyone you can't take in a fair fight.

Now, both of you know that a fair fight is a stupid one. Maybe you could take her — you’ve got several inches on her, not to mention muscle and a metal arm. But it would never happen; she never learned to fight fair, and (like so many things) you’ve forgotten how.

Natalia invites you to sleep with her — at first you're almost sure that she's going to kill you, but you go anyway. Because she was almost right when she said, _you want to be_ with _me_ , even if, at the time, she didn't really know it.

When you slide down between her legs, you can see the faint shadows of bruises where she broke a man's neck on the insides of her thighs. You run your hands over these bruises, and she shivers with pleasure, moans softly, even though you've barely touched her.

"Nata," you whisper, following the trail of your fingers with your lips, your tongue. She winds her hands into your hair and when you lap delicately at the wet line of her cunt, she grabs hard, and your whole body convulses at the sharp sensation.

She smells wonderful — like heat, like sex, human, visceral, better than blood — you never want to come up. You are dimly aware that your fingers must be leaving another set of bruises on top of the ones she already had, especially your left hand. But it makes you feel good, warm all over, to know that she could kill you like this, that you could be dying, if she wanted you to, and instead she's letting you mark her, right over where she left her own indelible mark on someone else.

You lick into her, thrust your tongue into her until it aches, until she arches and demands more, push two metal fingers into her cunt, just to see how she reacts.

She says, "Oh," and “More than that,” which seems like a bad idea, until she wraps her hand around the back of your skull and grinds against your face, screwing your fingers in deeper. The order is clear, _Fuck me, or I’ll do it myself_ , and you obey at once, sliding another in alongside, slowly, fascinated by the way her body opens for you. Now you wish you’d used your right hand for this, so that you could feel the lush, heated insides of her, slippery and grasping around you.

You want her, you want to be her, you want to be her next kill.

She comes, growling out a long string of invective that sounds all wrong even though the meaning settles comfortably into your bones, even into the missing places where you can't feel anything anymore. Her legs tighten around your head, around your neck, and you half-expect that this is it, the end of the line, and you let yourself go, let the darkness come for you. And then she's falling back against the mattress, and you're unsurprised to feel your own orgasm shaking over you as you inhale, painful and brilliant, a million cold pinpricks in your lungs, like inhaling sleet.

You groan, exhausted, and she murmurs something that sounds like an inquiry. All you can do is wrap yourself around her legs, resting your head in the hollow of her hip, and listen to her affectionate laughter.

It hurts, maybe a little, because you can't be her and you can't be anything else, and she knows it. But it's good too, because you're still here in bed with her, warm and alive.

*

You think you love her, because you see in her everything you wish you could have been. Dangerous, sexy, free from the command of too many men. You think you're in love with her because she can read your history in the way you fight and the way you speak and the way you hesitate, always, before laying your hands on her. Because she can read, in your muscle memory, the history of your body that you yourself have forgotten.

In fact, you love her for all those reasons and more. You just don’t have time to discover the rest.

*

It's snowing again, but it's always snowing. This time tomorrow, Nata will be married.

You’ve met Alexsandr, her future husband, only once. He's a hotshot pilot, all-around military maverick or something, and he has a wide-open smile that makes you think about skulls and finger bones. Finger bones especially.

Nata runs her hands up the shallow curve of your waist, and it's not a gentle touch. Her hands are firm and calloused from guns and knives and those clever little explosives that she keeps in her belt.

This time tomorrow, she'll be married. This time tomorrow, you'll be frozen, in cryogenic suspension, for years — maybe even decades — to come.

It's supposed to be success. It's supposed to mean that your mission is complete, that you've fulfilled this task, and you can rest. _Stand down, soldier._

Her touch isn't gentle, except for the places where it is — unbearably — and you think that you'd rather stay awake for this. That you'll never really sleep until she does.

"You’re beautiful," you tell her, still sticky along your hips, the tops of your thighs, still sweating a little.

Nata laughs at you, the way she's been laughing all night, sweet in the dark. She runs a hand through your hair, whispers, "I am deadly. You are just too enthralled to tell the difference."

"I think I know from deadly." You turn to look at her, but she is staring out the window, contemplating the blank field of snow.

"Perhaps you do," is all she says. It’s not enough, but it’s all she can spare — you understand — you pull her in close and breathe in the smell of her, skin and heat and sex, a sense memory to hang on to in the frozen years.

*

The image you take with you is one of her, crushing someone's throat under her boot, her face half-turned in your direction and smiling with challenge.

*  
__  
In cryo, you dream of following, always following, even though you don't know who it is, can't even see the gun in your hands. It’s a rifle. It’s a shotgun. It’s a Tommy gun.

Under your hands it feels like danger, like certainty. Beautiful, deadly. Perfect.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Based on exceedingly hand-wavey comics canon. Written for this lovely [porn meme](http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/510928.html?thread=21762768#cmt21762768) thing here.


End file.
